Sapphire Tri-X R9 390X

Sapphire Tri-X R9 390X Review – The R9 390X is the top of the line in AMD’s new 300 series, and it’s yet another rebadged product from last year. However, this time AMD has actually made a meaningful change to the product, which should help it outperform its successor.

Sapphire Tri-X R9 390X, A beefed up R9 290X

This card is based on the same GPU as that found in the R9 290X, but AMD has increased the memory bandwidth. Instead of using 1350MHz GDDR5, it has endowed the R9 390X with 1525MHz GDDR5, giving it an effective memory speed of 6Gbps. This is large 20% increase over the 5Gbps found on the R9 290X, which should come into play at higher resolutions. It’s also doubled the amount of onboard memory up to a staggering 8GB, more than enough for 4K resolution. Indeed, AMD is pushing the R9 390X as 4K-ready, but that’s a rather laughable suggestion given a GTX 980 Ti can’t even deliver playable 4K performance, and the R9 390X just doesn’t have the 4K performance to justify all that memory.

Sapphire has given its R9 390X quite possibly the smallest factory overclock we’ve ever seen, with the Boost speed increasing a mere 5MHz to 1055MHz. At this speed we see the R9 390X measuring considerably slower performance than the GTX 980. We should highlight that it’s possible to purchase a basic GTX 980 for the same price as this R9 390X, with Gainward’s GTX 980 starting at $699, and the R9 390X simply isn’t in the same league.

750 Watt Power Supply (Suggestion)2 x 8-pin AUX Power Connector4 x 8-pin AUX Power Connector is required for CrossFireX™ system.System power supply with two 8-pin PCIe® power connectors that are each capable of supplying 28 A of dedicated currentCD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive for installing softwareTo support 4 displays, one of the monitors has to support DisplayPortPCI Express® based PC is required with one X16 lane graphics slot available on the motherboard.